Mrs. Bonita was always there. Whether we were going to or from school, running to a friend’s house, or picking up snacks from the corner store, Mrs. Bonita was always sitting on her porch, watching the comings and goings of our neighborhood. The porch was covered, so she was there, rain or shine, hot or cold. Of course, her complaints increased during the extremes, but they were just interspersed in the real attraction to Mrs. Bonita’s porch: gossip. Mrs. Bonita always knew everyone’s business, and she was not afraid to share that business – along with commentary. She was the one who taught us that a lot of bad things happen when you are “not right with the Lord.”

Invariably, we all found ourselves on Mrs. Bonita’s stoop. I suppose there was some lure to her commentary. After an afternoon popsicle on her porch, you could begin to think all the problems of the world were the fault of someone else – Mr. Smith’s smoking habit, Mrs. Jones’ drinking problem, or the Jacobs family’s divorce. But we all knew sitting on that stoop was a guilty pleasure to be avoided, because sooner or later, whether you wanted her to or not, you would be the topic of Mrs. Bonita’s gossip. Suddenly, what had felt like a guilty pleasure at other’s expense became a source of shame.

For a long time, I thought Mrs. Bonita teaching us a sense of shame was counter to that “Lord” with whom she was always suggesting we get in line. I thought shame was counter to what Jesus would have us feel. But this week I was listening to a podcast interview with Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and he argues quite the opposite. He suggests we need a lot more shame in our society. Stevenson argues, “I think the way human beings evolve, the way we get to a consciousness where we no longer do the things we shouldn’t be doing, is we develop a consciousness of shame.”[i] This shame is the same shame that motivates us to create laws that protect the most vulnerable instead of blaming the victim. As people of faith, we understand this reality more than anyone. We know that part of our faith identity is committing to the process of confessing whom we are and what we have done, or left undone, and then making a conscious, albeit imperfect, effort to change – to repent. As Stevenson says, “There is a role for shame, not as an end, but as a process.”

This is what Jesus is trying to capture in today’s gospel lesson. Those who have gathered around Jesus are a bit like those who gathered on Mrs. Bonita’s porch. They begin telling Jesus about the latest gossip in town. The Galileans who were slaughtered on their pilgrimage to the temple, whose blood was mingled with the blood of the holy sacrifices; or the thirteen who died when the tower of Siloam collapsed. Those gathered around Jesus were expecting the same verdict Mrs. Bonita often gave, “Those Galileans and those in that tower must not have been living right with God.” Perhaps they were looking to boost their own pride, or perhaps they were actually looking for a genuine explanation of why bad things happen to good people. But mostly, they were looking to redirect shame. And Jesus is not having it today.

Jesus does something in our gospel lesson that Mrs. Bonita never did. Jesus tells a parable about an unproductive fig tree the vineyard owner wants to cut down, and the gardener who pleads the tree’s case. His method is a little indirect, as parables often are, but the result is jarring. When those around Jesus want to gossip and cast shame, Jesus basically says, “I need you to redirect that shame to yourself – not as an end unto itself, but as a process to make yourselves whole before God.” In other words, Jesus ask those gathered to stop worrying about the big philosophical questions like why bad things happen to good people, and instead ask questions that matter.[ii] How can I change my own behaviors and patterns so that I not only reflect God’s glory, but I also begin to produce fruit?

The shift Jesus suggests today is both convicting and freeing. Instead of getting caught up in the business of others, instead of gossiping about the problems of those people, and instead of getting caught up in theological rabbit holes that, while fascinating, ultimately just leave us stuck in our heads, Jesus wants us to look inward – to do the work of repentance that might actually change the world. Instead of casting shame, Jesus wants us to harness shame, to raise our consciousness, so that we might bear fruit. The work of repentance is much more productive work than any kind of outward looking and judging. Besides, as scholar Fred Craddock suggests, “without repentance, all is lost anyway.”[iii]

As an adult looking back, I have often wondered how Mrs. Bonita’s stoop might have been transformed if she had helped fellow gossips turn to repentance. If after a good gossip session, she might have said, “And now what about you? I heard you have been up to some shameful stuff too. What are doing to change?” Of course, I am not sure Mrs. Bonita would have had as many guests on her porch had she asked those kinds of questions, but she certainly would have done a lot more to transform the neighborhood instead of indirectly hoping our own shame might help us “get right with God.”

The good news is that when we are terrible gardeners for one another, Christ is the gardener we all need. The gardener in Jesus’ parable tends this same unproductive fig tree for three years, to no avail. Even the vineyard owner is ready to rip the tree out of the ground and start over. But not the gardener. The gardener not only asks for mercy for the tree, the gardener commits to much, much more. The gardener begs for one more year to aerate the soil, to get his hands dirty with manure to help nourish the tree. The gardener does not give up on the unproductive tree, but instead offers to double down, to massage the environment in an effort create a total change in this tree. As one scholar suggests, “The manure around our roots is the very blood of the one who pleads for our justification before God, the one through whom we may offer up the fruits of the kingdom to our Creator.”[iv]

I know repentance is hard. I know our sins are so overwhelming that we would much prefer to look at someone else’s sins than our own. I know the temptation of front stoops is to wax about theological questions that really just distract us from our own sinfulness and the need to bear fruit. My invitation for you this week is to redirect your attention to the gardener, the one who is, at this very moment, aerating your soil, tirelessly fertilizing your roots so that you might let go of the “stuff” of life, and instead, through repentance, bear fruit worthy of our God. That kind of work will not be as fun or escapist as sitting on a front porch with the local gossip. But that kind of work will free you from needing to escape in the first place. Amen.

I have been thinking a lot about death lately. That probably sounds a bit morbid, but given my profession, should not be much of a surprise. I think death has been on my mind for lots of reasons: we celebrated the death of an incredible woman at our parish last week, our Adult Forum series during Eastertide is about death (end of life care, wills, legacy giving, funeral planning), and this Sunday’s lessons, although beloved, are quite common readings for funerals. Everywhere I turn seems to offer reminders of death, and yet here we are in the season of Easter – a time to honor resurrection – to honor Christ’s victory over death!

One of the reasons we are freed up to talk about death in Eastertide is because death is changed through the resurrection of Christ. In light of the resurrection, we see our life and death differently. We proclaim that difference in the Book of Common Prayer at funerals. “Life is changed, not ended,” we say in the burial office. Whereas the secular world would have us consume life to its fullest, ignoring the inevitability of death; would have us preserve our bodies and make ourselves look younger to ignore our natural aging; would have us avoid conversations with our loved ones and community about death, the Church says something different.

The Church says Christ’s resurrection changes life so much, talking about death is no longer morbid. The Church says, the promise of eternal life allows us make those funeral plans with a spirit of joy, not a spirit of dread. The Church says that our time among the living is meant to bless and honor others, so making that will and designating those legacy gifts to a church are in great congruence with our understanding of resurrection living. An Adult Forum series on death (or Resurrection Living, as we have called it) or reading lessons from funerals during Eastertide makes perfect sense. Those exercises free us from seeing death as final, encouraging instead a life of resurrection hope and joy – a life lived in the light of eternal life. I hope you will join us this week at Hickory Neck as we dive into that new identity and welcome the transformation of life in the light of the resurrection.

This week has been a bit rough. We started the week talking about Ray Rice and the NFL’s handling of the physical abuse of Rice’s then-fiancée. The incident raised all sorts of questions about domestic violence: how genuine the NFL’s stance on domestic violence is, why people stay in abusive relationships, and what domestic violence really looks like. And then, just days later, we honored the anniversary of September 11th. We made space for those who are still mourning deaths, we remembered our own experiences of that day, and we reflected on how much our world has changed in the shadow of that event.

Needless to say, when pondering the horrors of domestic violence and terrorism, the absolute last thing I wanted to do this week was to pray on our gospel lesson from Matthew. The scene is familiar. Jesus has just told the disciples about how to resolve conflict within the community of faith, and Peter appears with a question. “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” In other words, Peter basically comes to Jesus asking the question that we all want ask, “Okay, so I know you want us to be a community that honors God, even when we fight. But how many times, exactly, do we really have to forgive someone? I mean, surely there are limits to how many times we have to keep forgiving someone?” I give Peter credit. Peter manages to come off sounding pretty generous. I mean, how many of us would propose forgiving someone seven times before cutting them off completely? Instead, our most common colloquialism is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” In our culture, we will forgive someone once and clear the slate. But if people cross us twice, we believe we would be foolish to stay in a relationship with them because they have proven that they cannot be trusted.

But Jesus does not concede to our modern sensibilities about forgiveness. Jesus’ response to Peter is shocking, “Not seven times, but I tell you, seventy-seven times.” Now seventy-seven times is way more leeway with which most of us feels comfortable. And that is not even taking into account that some translations translate Jesus’ instructions not as seventy-seven times but seventy times seven.[i] Regardless, the point is that Jesus is basically saying that there is not true end to forgiveness. “There can be no limit on forgiveness, because [forgiveness] is a never-ending practice that is essential to the life of the church.”[ii]

What ultimately makes us feel uncomfortable about Jesus’ words is that when we begin to talk about forgiveness, most of us have some pretty distorted beliefs about forgiveness. Some of us believe that forgiveness means excusing or overlooking the harm that has been done to us and saying that everything is okay. For those who hold that belief, forgiveness can be equated with stuffing our feelings down deep inside or downright lying in order to keep the peace. Others of us believe that forgiveness means allowing those who have hurt us to persist in their behavior. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness is so important, that we become recurring victims of offenses. Still others believe that forgiving means forgetting what happened. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness is pretending an old hurt does not still hurt. Finally, others see forgiveness as something that we can do at will, and always all at once. For those who hold this belief, forgiveness must be immediate and offered quickly. The problem with all these models of forgiveness – of overlooking the harm, saying everything is okay, of allowing recurring behavior, of trying to forget, or forgiving once and for all – is that these models of forgiveness fall apart when we run into extreme situations like the ones from this week with Ray Rice or September 11th.

The tremendously good news this week is that all of these understandings about forgiveness would have been foreign to Jesus. I was reading one of my favorite authors this week on her thoughts about forgiveness. Jan Richardson says of forgiveness, “The heart of forgiveness is not to be found in excusing harm or allowing [the harm] to go unchecked. [Forgiveness] is to be found, rather, in choosing to say that although our wounds will change us, we will not allow them to forever define us. Forgiveness does not ask us to forget the wrong done to us but instead to resist the ways [the wrong] seeks to get its poisonous hooks in us. Forgiveness asks us to acknowledge and reckon with the damage so that we will not live forever in [the damage’s] grip.”[iii]

That is why Jesus tells the hyperbolic parable about the servant and the forgiving king. The forgiveness by the king of ten thousand talents (or the equivalent of 150,000 years of labor)[iv] is almost ludicrous in its generosity. The servant would never have been able to pay that amount back. But then again, the forgiveness we receive from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is also ludicrous – ludicrously abundant, underserved, and more than we could ever earn. And yet, the times we struggle to forgive will be like when the unforgiving servant cannot forgive the hundred denarii owed by another servant (or the equivalent of a hundred days of labor) – a much less egregious amount to owe. In order to be a people who live under Jesus’ excessive forgiveness, we must be a people who are also willing to work on the art of forgiveness. But we do not do that work out of obligation – instead we do that work as a gift to ourselves.

There once was a woman who went to see her Rabbi. The woman was a divorced single mom who was working to support herself and her three children. She explained to the Rabbi that since her husband walked out on them, every month she struggled to pay the bills. Though she and the kids could not afford everyday treats like going to the movies, her ex-husband was living it up with his new wife. The Rabbi suggested that the woman forgive her ex-husband and she was indignant. “How can you tell me to forgive him,” she demanded. The Rabbi responded, “I’m not asking you to forgive him because what he did was acceptable. What he did was not acceptable – it was mean and selfish. I am asking you to forgive him because he does not deserve the power to live in your head and turn you into a bitter angry woman. I would like to see him out of your life emotionally as completely as he is out of your life physically, but you keep holding on to him. Know this: you are not hurting him by holding on to that resentment. You are only hurting yourself.”[v]

Jesus does not propose that we forgive seventy-seven or seventy times seven times because Jesus is a sadist. Jesus knows forgiving is hard. But Jesus also knows that the worst part about forgiveness is not that the work is hard. The worst part about forgiveness is that when we do not forgive, we only hurt ourselves. And Jesus does not want us to be locked in a prison of resentment and anger. Jesus wants us to be free. One of the reasons Jesus asks us to forgive so many times is because Jesus knows this work does not happen overnight. Forgiveness is not a once-and-for-all event. Forgiveness requires us to keep going, to keep trying, because only in the practice of trying – in fact trying until our earthly lives are over – will we ever come close to the profound forgiveness that we receive through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord. Our work on mastering the art of forgiveness is not a gift that we give to others. Our work on mastering the art of forgiveness is the gift that we give to ourselves. We work on the art of forgiveness because we are working on loving ourselves as much as Jesus loves us. Amen.

I have struggled with the issue of war and peace. In my heart, I am anti-war and pro-peace. I cannot condone killing others because others have killed. War does terrible things to everyone involved. And arguments for “just wars” just seem like cop-outs – ways of avoiding the call to be a peaceful people. That is the argument of my heart. But when faced with issues of genocide and oppression, my head tends to get in the way. The recent movement by ISIS in Iraq has me in angst over why we are not doing something to stop the genocide. And yet that “something” is often assumed to involve more violence or war – certainly not peace.

I wonder what Bishop Jones would have to say about this ethical debate. Born in 1880, Paul Jones, who we honor today, was born and raised in the Episcopal Church. He became a priest, serving in Utah as a missionary. In 1914 he became archdeacon and later Bishop of the Missionary District of Utah. Bishop Jones did much to expand the church’s mission stations. But as WWI began, Bishop Jones openly opposed the war. When he declared war to be “unchristian,” the press went wild. The House of Bishops investigated and declared that Bishop Jones should resign because of his antiwar sentiments. Though Bishop Jones finally caved in and resigned, he spent the next 23 years advocating for peace until he died in 1941.

I think Bishop Jones must have embraced Jesus Christ’s words from John’s gospel lesson today. Jesus Christ says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” For Bishop Jones, he knew Jesus to be a man of peace and love. For Bishop Jones, his pursuit of peace felt like the “truth” – and in some way resigning as bishop freed him to truly follow the gospel.

For us, I think discerning an ethic of peace verses war is not simple. Issues of peace are complicated and unsettling – who can really define “truth”? The good news is – no matter what we believe about war, we know our God is a God of love. Love is a truth we can comfortably claim. Once we meditate on love, we can often find a bit more clarity. We can even come to some clarity about this contested issue of peace. Today we thank Bishop Jones, Jesus, and all those who encourage us to struggle with injustice in the world – for in the struggle, we find truth – and the truth will set us free. Amen.